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Grandin, the Market, the star, and the neighborhood notes with a little air in them.
WDBJ reports the city held a vigil Wednesday night for International Overdose Awareness Day. The Virginia Department of Health counted almost 1,200 overdose deaths in the state in 2025. First responders told the station they still want Narcan in houses before the ambulance.
WDBJ's Game of the Week is Cave Spring and William Byrd at Bogle Stadium on Friday. Both sides made the playoffs last year, and both bring back a pile of starters. County rivalry, real scoreboard. Confirm kickoff on that broadcast — we are not the PA.
Cardinal News says the region's first Wawa — already in Lexington and Lynchburg — is scheduled to open next Thursday on West Main Street in Salem. Hoagies without the highway trip, if the calendar holds.
Ricky Young started Monday as editor in chief at Cardinal News, the Roanoke-based nonprofit. The shop says he is there to grow investigative and accountability reporting in Southwest and Southside Virginia. Young has edited in Denver, Orange County, San Diego, Nashville, and Chattanooga.
The Roanoke Rambler reports former Mayor David Bowers wants city leaders to deny, on the record, that dissolving the Hotel Roanoke Conference Center Commission is a step toward a casino at the hotel. The city has an NDA with an unnamed casino developer who has paid Roanoke $75,000 on a Berglund entertainment-district pitch. The Rambler says it found no public document tying the hotel sale to that developer — and asks City Hall to say so out loud.
Virginia Tech is selling the hotel and the conference center together after folding the conference center under the university foundation. Cardinal News reports the university wants a buyer who keeps the current use — rooms, meetings, the brick at the foot of the Market — not a rumor of what else it could become.
Roanoke City Public Libraries and the Junior League of the Roanoke Valley say they will keep Dolly Parton's Imagination Library going here after her death Tuesday. WSLS reports the program has signed up close to 2,000 children ages 0 to 5. Sign-up help is at the Community Empowerment Center; the books still have to be read aloud.
Roanoke County says the Vinton Library will open at noon on Tuesday, Sept. 1. Every other Roanoke County Public Library stays on regular hours. If that is your Tuesday morning branch, start the coffee later.
Dozens of Roanoke College first-years spent Friday on a foundation for the college's 21st R House, a student-built home for a local family. WFXR reports the crew is aiming to finish by December — which is a lot of hammers before finals, and the point.
RAM House has shifted into a new building and is expanding what it can offer people without housing in Roanoke. Cardinal News walked the move. The work is the same; the floor plan is not.
A professional climber scaled the Mill Mountain Star on July 30 for a film project, and city officials spent the next week telling people how that was allowed. Cardinal News has the Field Notes. The star is still the star. Please do not try this on a Tuesday.